Strategies for Questioning
Every human approaches a challenge uniquely since none of us have identical experiences and knowledge to use. As with our process of learning, finding strategies that optimize your ability to question is based solely on your experiences and capabilities. Try out the ones on this page to see which works best for you – or mix and match to make an even better fit.
Scientific Method
Commonly taught in science education, the scientific method consists of six steps:
- Make an observation.
- Ask a question.
- Form a testable explanation (hypothesis).
- Make a prediction based on the hypothesis.
- Test the prediction.
- Use the results to refine the hypothesis or prediction or make new ones.
There are pros and cons to using this as the typical model in science education.
Pros
- Scientists observe, question, and test regularly, so students are exploring the fundamental tools used in science.
- The scientific method’s high degree of structure suits many styles of classroom education.
- Classroom management is easier to maintain since students follow the same path.
- Classroom materials are more manageable since all students will be running similar experiments.
- Because it tends to create one “correct” solution in a classroom (promoting convergent thinking), it is easier to grade.
Cons
- Although scientists observe, question, and test, it is infrequently in this order. Every new piece of information creates new observations, questions, and ideas to test. Scientists don’t use sequential steps all the time, rather they follow the clues as they are discovered. Tangents and detours are common place during a scientist’s week.
- If a rigid approach to the scientific method is used in education, convergent thinking is promoted and creativity and curiosity are squashed.
- Divergent thinking, in which there are many viable solutions, takes time to is rarely part of the process, but it is one of the most exciting parts of doing scientific research.
- If the steps of the creative process are assessed as right or wrong rather than in shades of usefulness, then gems of ideas can be crushed when they are deemed wrong. Student growth during the process is more challenging to grade, so promoting divergent thinking is minimized.
- Rarely is there time in a course for students to grow from a setback. The lack of time to revisit challenges is one of the critical differences between science and science education. Growing from a setback is part of a scientist’s creative process – actually, all creative processes.
Serious Play
If you ask most scientists, going to work is fun. You are getting paid to explore ideas, and usually, they are your own or include their components. What could be better? It is called serious play or complex problem-solving.
While Richard Feynman was a professor at Cornell University, he found that he was getting tired of science. He missed the days of playing with ideas. As he watched students throw and spin plates in the cafeteria, he realized what he was observing was intriguing mathematically. He went off and played with the math and connected it to how “electron orbits start in relativity.” By playing with ideas, he opened new avenues of exploration in quantum electrodynamics, which led to his Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965. If you haven’t explored his book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, you are missing a treat into the fun of science.
First Principles Thinking
Elon Musk, who started PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX, attributes how to think in first principles, which he learned studying physics, as a critical component to his success.
First Principle Thinking involves actively questioning every assumption you believe you know about a situation — and then creating new ideas from the fundamentals. Conversely, most of us reason by analogy, which involves solving challenges using widely-held best practices of the majority. Are they the best for this scenario? Unless questioned, you won’t know.
The three steps of First Principles Thinking are:
1) Identify and define your assumptions when thinking about the challenge,
2) Breakdown the problem into its fundamental principles, and
3) Create solutions from scratch using your new perspectives.
So to think “out of the box,” question what you are bringing to the box, then proceed with a new perspective.
Unleash Your Creativity
We have two hemispheres of our brain, each in charge of specific processing, but also monitoring the other. One side tends to control convergent thinking – coming up with one correct solution to a challenge. The other side supports divergent thinking – creating multiple, diverse solutions to problems. Sadly, most testing in education, particularly standardized tests, emphasizes convergent thinking. The focus on convergent thinking in our early years strengthens one hemisphere of our brain, helping shrivel the divergent-focused region. And to amplify the inequity of our inborn curiosity, the strengthened hemisphere creates a greater control over the other.
What can we do to strengthen our divergent thinking capabilities?
- Realize creativity does not depend on intelligence. Watch young children play with simple toys. They make wonderfully creative games, experiences, and worlds with their imagination. We all have creativity. We need to learn how to expand it as we grow – or at least retain what we started with.
- Rekindle your childlike sense of wonderment that questions what most find apparent.
- Follow seeds of interest to see how they grow.
- Prepare by researching what we think we already know.
- Recognize how accepted perspectives limit creative solutions and strive to go beyond the “norm.”
- Create regular times to ponder, daydream, and relax.
Test Your Creativity
What are your current abilities that affect creativity? Take a free online Torrance Test of Creative Thinking. The 40 questions gauge your skills to:
- abstract concepts from ideas,
- connect things that initially appear not to be related,
- change your perspective on a situation,
- desire to change the “norm,”
- confidence to push conventional boundaries,
- handle paradox,
- deal with complex relationships in large amounts of information, and
- keep trying to create better solutions even when reasonable ones exist.
If you take the test, remember it is a snapshot of you at a moment in time. Training and new experiences may change your creativity at any time.
The Bottom Line
Scientific discoveries depend on creative approaches to challenges. Divergent thinking promotes creativity, so add a healthy dose of activities that encourage “out of the box” solutions to your learning.
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